


what's better than love?

by xx_bittersweet_merlin



Series: naruto wlw fics [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Dorks in Love, F/F, Marriage Proposal, Multi, Polyamory, Threesome - F/F/F, nothing but a silly feel good fic dont judge me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 15:03:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13273959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xx_bittersweet_merlin/pseuds/xx_bittersweet_merlin
Summary: “MARRY ME,” Sakura screamed in a bar full of nearly a hundred people.-Sakura, Ino, and Karin take a break from studying and go out on the town. Sakura has an epiphany.





	what's better than love?

“Ino, I am running on no less than seven cups of coffee, two Redbulls from the vending machine in the breakroom, and three hours of sleep in the last forty-eight hours. If you poke me with that stick again, I _will_ use these arms you’re always drooling over to _dunk you into a toilet_.”

Ino pouted and moved her hand away from Sakura’s twitching face, twirling the coffee stirrer from the drink she’d finished over an hour ago in a way that was somehow mocking. “I don’t get it. You usually like it when I poke you with my stick.”

Karin guffawed from her place on the lone sofa in the room. No one knew how it got there- in one of the hospital’s archive rooms filled with bookshelves and only two tables to research at. It had simply _appeared_ one day. Sakura deeply suspected that Karin herself had bribed Naruto into moving it for her with ramen. Then again, maybe she didn’t need to bribe him. Everyone knew that once Naruto had found out they were related, he’d attached himself to “his cousin” (they probably weren’t even that closely related) and would do anything for her except perhaps sacrifice his boyfriend to the moon god.

“Your skills with strap-ons aside,” Sakura drawled, trying to curb the irritation she knew she was radiating- she knew it only egged Ino on, and furthermore, she didn’t actually want to get into a serious argument with her girlfriend over harmless teasing that was only bothering her because she was stressed. “We really need to study. You want to become a doctor, correct?”

Ino’s pout deepened. She slumped back in her seat and tossed the stick halfway across the room into a trash bin. “I do,” she said, voice bordering on a whine, “but we’ve been at it for hours. We could be doing _other_ stuff.”

Sakura raised her eyebrows at her over the rim of her book. “Such as?”

Ino huffed. “You know. Stuff.”

“I can’t _imagine_ what you mean.”

“Come on!” Ino wheedled, full on whining now and kicking Sakura lightly in the shin. “You _know_ I bought that… _thing_ …” She glanced at their girlfriend across the room. “For Karin.”

Karin perked up like someone had brought in a tray of melted fudge and waved it under her nose. That woman would do damn near anything for fudge, a fact Sakura and Ino had taken advantage of more than once. “What thing?”

“I _wanted_ it to be a surprise,” Ino told her, giving Sakura a judgmental look that received only an eye-roll in return. “But since _some people_ are workaholics…I know how you like nipple play,” she said with an over-exaggerated leer. Karin let out a cry of victory.

“Yes!”

Sakura groaned and slammed her book shut. She obviously wasn’t going to be able to focus. “All right, Ino,” she said with a sigh, making the blonde temporarily light up with a hopeful expression. “We’ll take a ten-minute break and go get some late dinner.”

Ino wailed and threw herself dramatically to the floor. Sakura stared at her with a twitching eyebrow. “Sa-ku-ra!” she moaned. “The exam isn’t until eleven tomorrow. I’ll settle for sleep at this point!”

Karin, who’d gotten up and come over to stand near the table, coughed into her fist to get their attention. “I kind of have to agree,” she admitted. “I’m _really_ tired.”

Sakura glanced down at Ino’s pleading expression and up at the dark circles under Karin’s eyes and felt guilt begin to worm its way into her gut. She’d probably been pushing them all too hard, she thought. “Okay, okay, we can stop for tonight,” she relented, smiling when Ino leapt up from the floor and cheered as she flung her arms around Karin, who wore a smile of her own. “What time is it?”

“Ten past ten,” Karin informed her with an adjustment to her glasses. For some reason, she tended to perform the tic whenever she answered a question. Sakura and Ino both found it endearing and liked to come up with increasingly inane questions to watch her get flustered and start to adjust her glasses more and more.

Ino giggled into her shoulder. “Tenten.”

Karin rolled her eyes. “You must be truly woozy if you’re making that joke.”

Sakura stood and stretched. Both women watched her arms appreciatively. “Guess we’ll head home, then,” she said with a small yawn. They each gathered up what scrolls and books they’d been using and began returning them to their proper places- God forbid Tsunade or Shizune found an archive room a mess and found out they hadn’t cleaned up after themselves.

Emerging into the night from the exit downstairs was a breath of fresh air- figuratively and literally, considering the air conditioning wasn’t used much in the archives where there was less foot traffic. Sakura took a deep breath and pulled up her coat collar to stave off a shiver. Spring days may have been comfortably cool, but the nights were chilly. Now that she wasn’t staring at blocks of text and sitting hunched over, her eyes weren’t hurting and her back wasn’t aching. Ino, for all her complaining, walked with pep in her stride, and even Karin looked a little more awake. Though there was a limit to how awake she looked at any given time, considering she had a habit of staying up late reading or watching the dumb comedy shows she liked.

“It’s only ten, right?” Ino looked at her with a grin Sakura knew well. It was her _I’m about to wheedle more out of you_ grin.

“Ino, whatever you’re thinking, no.”

“Come on!” She paused and stamped one foot, tilting her head and pouting. Sakura knew she was exaggerating it just to whittle her down with humor. “No one goes to bed at _ten o’clock_. All I’m saying is we go for a _few_ drinks, nothing crazy, have some fun. We need to unwind before tomorrow, okay?”

Sakura opened her mouth to argue, but Karin continued where Ino had left off. “That’s true. Unwinding from stress is very important,” she agreed. When Sakura turned her gaze on her, she smiled with wide, trusting eyes. “I promise we’ll be responsible. Please?”

 _Dammit_. She’d learned those eyes from Naruto, Sakura was sure. That little fucker. He used them all the time to get what he wanted from his own partner.

She sighed and let herself relax a little. How bad could a few drinks and snacks really be? It wasn’t as if anyone would give them trouble or anything of the sort. Sakura was one of the heroes of the war, well in line to be Hokage herself one day, and her partners were well-known kunoichi in their own rights.

“All right,” she gave in, smiling. “Let’s go unwind a bit.”

* * *

 

 _“You were right. This was the best idea!”_ Sakura screamed over the music blaring in the building, laughing when Karin was jostled into her and nearly tripped. The crowd was thick enough they were pressed together like fish in a can, but she’d stopped caring two shots of sake ago. All thoughts of the exams required for medic nin to acquire full doctoral status at the hospital fled from her mind as the bar patrons moved back and forth.

Normally, she hated environments like these, filled with drunk people who smelled sour and acted even more sour. However, it seemed tonight was their lucky night- everyone seemed as if they’d bathed and were too concerned with whoever they’d come with to pay much attention to anyone else. Sakura hadn’t had to slap anyone for groping anyone and that, in her book, counted as a win. From the looks of it there were plenty of same gender couples there, and that was another win.

Ino slithered up behind her and pressed their hips together, moving at a slower rhythm than the rest of the crowd and giggling into the nape of Sakura’s neck. “It’s been a while since we just had fun,” she said into Sakura’s ear, knowing Karin would understand even if she couldn’t hear due to her ability to read lips. The redhead pressed in closer in front of Sakura, wrapping herself around her like they were slow dancing.

The last time Sakura had done anything like this, it had just been her and Ino. They’d been together for two years- and they’d been happy- but she’d felt like something was missing. She’d been afraid to bring it up until Ino had turned around one day as they were walking towards the hospital and blurted out that she was feeling the exact same way.

That had been right around the time Karin decided to live in Konoha permanently. Like Sasuke, she’d been pardoned for her crimes after the war, and decided to plant some roots the only place she had a relative and a friend. Ino had actually made friends with her first, bringing her out of her shell, and by the time Sakura started to get shifts with her, she’d heard plenty of good things about her.

It had been a little awkward, at first, considering their previous experiences with each other, but they’d bonded over their shared experience of chasing after an idiot. Sakura found she genuinely liked Karin as a person- her dry humor, her nerdiness, her occasionally obsessive tendencies about her hobbies. (Maybe she was a little _too_ obsessive sometimes, but everyone had faults.) They’d started to spend more time together outside of work, just the three of them.

Asking Karin to date them had just felt _right_.

Sometimes, like now, Sakura wondered if any god was out there, and if there were, if they were listening when she thanked them for the two lights of her life. She never could have imagined when she was a twelve-year-old genin that she’d be dating a woman, let alone two.

“You’re spacing out,” Karin yelled into her ear, a giggle in her tone that told Sakura she was a little tipsy but not quite drunk yet. “What’re you thinking?”

Sakura beamed and leaned her head back to stare at the sky through the skylight above. The band was playing some easy, peppy tune that sounded like something that would be playing on their music player at home. They’d finally had enough income to move into a larger apartment, with Karin living with them, one with two spare bedrooms they’d converted into a painting room, for Karin, and a whole separate closet with a makeup space for Ino (though they’d kept that one a secret, and the woman had _squealed_ when they showed her). (They’d insisted Sakura should have her own space as well, but she retorted that seeing as the Hokage had gifted her with her own training grounds, she didn’t need one.) It had a nice window view of the Academy, where Karin subbed sometimes, and the hospital, where they could wait and watch for the others to come home if they didn’t come back together. Sakura couldn’t imagine spending the rest of her days anywhere else.

“How much I love you two,” she shouted back with only a little bit of a laugh.

Ino cooed in her ear. “Aww, Sakura’s getting lovey-dovey. She’s probably drunk.”

“I’m not drunk! I’ve only had a few and you know I’m no lightweight like you.”

“It all goes to your forehead.”

Sakura elbowed her, though not hard enough to hurt. “I do, though!” she insisted, laughing when Karin nearly tripped someone up and apologized with a beet red face. “I love you both so much!”

Karin and Ino gave each other a look over her shoulder and snickered. “You sure you aren’t drunk, Haruno?” Karin teased, glasses glinting in the blue light that bathed the room. Sakura would nab them to tease her, but considering how many people were around, that would prove disastrous- she was more than a little clumsy without them.

“My life would suck without you,” Sakura continued. And it would- it really would. She’d be back to being her team’s odd man out; even if they got along now they’d gone on different paths, and everyone always seemed to pair off around her. Even Kakashi-sensei, who they’d finally hounded into going on a date with Iruka. “I can’t imagine ever being like anything else.”

Ino tilted her head with a frown born only of confusion, still dancing but very distracted. “Sakura?”

“I wanna be like this forever,” Sakura breathed, gaining an odd moment of clarity amidst the noise and the alcohol and the glittering lights. “I think we should get married.”

Karin, who’d snagged another drink and had been dancing with it in one hand, choked on her sip and spat red wine all over some poor sap’s shirt. “S-sorry!” she squeaked, cringing at his angry glare as he was pulled away by the movements of the crowd. She turned to Sakura with a startled look on her face. “Did you just say we should get married?” She shot an equally incredulous Ino a look.

“MARRY ME,” Sakura screamed in a bar full of nearly a hundred people.

Whoever had been controlling the music apparently decided a great moment to stop was just before she shouted her request. The crowd paused as people began looking around for the source of the scream, while Ino and Karin remained frozen and staring at their partner with wide eyes.

“I mean, I know it can’t be legal- at least not yet,” Sakura rambled, swaying out of Ino’s grip and running her hands through her hair. This caused the people closest to them to turn to stare, which caused a ripple effect until _everyone there_ was staring at them. Karin twitched. Konoha was one of the most accepting places on the planet, but she still preferred to not be the center of attention. She couldn’t deny the hilarity of this situation, though. “But I wanna marry you and spend the rest of my life with you I love you both _so much_ and you deserve a ceremony and to wear the dress and-”

“Deep breaths, dear,” Ino said, growing much too amused with the whole situation.

“So yeah,” Sakura finished, eyes wide and expression windblown. “Marry me?”

Ino stared at her for a moment before looking at Karin, who looked sheepish. She could have sworn she heard someone whisper _Say yes!_ under their breath.

“Well?” she asked, smirking. “Do you want to marry this dork?”

Karin grinned at her. “She is the only one who’ll eat the eggs I drop.” Ino cringed a little. Even she refused to eat the eggs Karin made- she _always_ dropped them on her way from the counter to the table, but Sakura insisted that the “five second rule” was legitimate. Maybe it was more to do with the fact that she kept their floor unreasonably, almost clinically, clean. When Ino mentioned that their _feet_ touched that floor, Sakura just looked at her with a smirk and said she’d had her mouth much worse places than their feet.

“Is that a yes?” Sakura asked, hopeful.

Ino and Karin shared a smirk before turning to smile at her. “Yes,” they said in unison.

The patrons erupted into a screaming fit around them. Several women surged forward to clap them on the back and congratulate them as others began jumping up and down. “ _Turn the music back on!”_ a man who worked night shifts at the hospital with Sakura screamed, wearing a smile so wide it looked as if his face might crack.

The music cranked back up around them. Sakura let out a carefree laugh and let herself be jostled by the crowd, pulled in what felt like every direction until someone pushed her onto the stage and tugged her back onto their waiting hands. She knew Ino and Karin followed, if the excited shouting was anything to go by. The hands beneath her were strong and supportive, carrying her away to the bar where she spotted someone already pouring a line of drinks. “I want to play this song at the wedding!” she yelled. “And you’re all invited!”

The bar patrons screamed again.

Yeah, she thought, her life was pretty great.

* * *

 

Until she woke up the next morning and realized it was eleven-fifteen. At least they always kept things spicy in the Yamanaka-Uzumaki-Haruno household.


End file.
